We presented “Configuring Zeus: A case study of online crime target selection and knowledge transmission” at APWG’s eCrime 2017 conference this past week in Scottsdale Arizona. The paper is here, and the slides from Richard Clayton’s talk are here. Zeus (sometimes called Zbot) is a family of credential stealing malware which was widely deployed from … Continue reading Configuring Zeus
Security economics is a thriving research discipline, kicked off in 2001 with Ross Anderson’s seminal paper. There has been an annual workshop since 2002. In recent years there has also been an effort to integrate some of the key concepts and findings into course curricula, including in the Part II Security course at Cambridge and … Continue reading Economics of Cybersecurity MOOC
As part of the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition 2014, I spoke at the panel session “Privacy with technology: where do we go from here?”, along with Ross Anderson, and Bashar Nuseibeh with Jon Crowcroft as chair. The audio recording is available and some notes from the session are below. The session started with brief … Continue reading Privacy with technology: where do we go from here?
I’m liveblogging WEIS 2014, as I did for WEIS 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2009. This is the thirteenth workshop on the economics of information security, and the sessions are being held today and tomorrow at Penn State. The panels and refereed paper sessions will be blogged in comments below this post.
Jim Graves, Alessandro Acquisti and I are giving a paper today at WEIS on Experimental Measurement of Attitudes Regarding Cybercrime, which we hope might nudge courts towards more rational sentencing for cybercrime. At present, sentencing can seem somewhere between random and vindictive. People who commit a fraud online can get off with a tenth of … Continue reading Don’t shoot the demonstrators
Long time readers will recall that last year ICANN published the draft report of our study into the abuse of privacy and proxy services when registering domain names. At WEIS 2014 I will present our academic paper summarising what we have found — and the summary (as the slides for the talk indicate) is very … Continue reading A Study of Whois Privacy and Proxy Service Abuse
After 9/11, we worked on the economics of security, in an attempt to bring back some rationality. Next followed the economics of privacy, which Alessandro Acquisti and others developed to explain why people interact with social media the way they do. A year after the Snowden revelations, it’s time to talk about the economics of … Continue reading Post-Snowden: the economics of surveillance
I’m liveblogging WEIS 2013, as I did in 2012, 2011, 2010 and 2009. This is the twelfth workshop on the economics of information security, and the sessions are being held today and tomorrow at Georgetown University. The panels and refereed paper sessions will be blogged in comments below this post (and there’s another liveblog by … Continue reading Workshop on the Economics of Information Security 2013
Alex Henney and I have decided to publish a paper on smart metering that we prepared in February for the Cabinet Office and for ministers. DECC is running a smart metering project that is supposed to save energy by replacing all Britain’s gas and electricity meters with computerised ones by 2019, and to cost only … Continue reading The Perils of Smart Metering
I’m liveblogging WEIS 2012, as I did in 2011, 2010 and 2009. The event is being held today and tomorrow at the Academy of Sciences in Berlin. We were welcomed by Nicolas Zimmer, Berlin’s permanent secretary for economics and research who mentioned the “explosive cocktail” of streetview, and of using social media for credit ratings, … Continue reading Workshop on the Economics of Information Security 2012